Cut to the Chase

by Joan Boswell

  She reached to hug him, remembered how careful she’d been with her broken ribs, and stopped.

  He’d held up a restraining arm as she moved forward. “Don’t. I hurt everywhere.”

  “Oh, my god, I’m sorry. This is my fault. Oh, Willem, I’d give anything not to have phoned you, not to have asked you to translate the message.”

  Willem gingerly placed his hands on her arms. “Hollis.”

  Reluctantly she fixed on his battered face.

  “This is not your fault.”

  “How can you say that? Of course it’s my fault.”

  He squeezed her arms. “Listen to me. You did not ask me to investigate. You asked for a translation, and I volunteered. Got that—volunteered to see what I could find out about Super Bug.”

  “Initially, that was true, but when you said I should go to the police, I didn’t.”

  Willem released her. “No. I could have said no. I’m an adult. Grown men have choices. I made a bad one, but it’s not your fault.”

  He withdrew his hands, touched his cheek then again extended his hands for her to see. “I have both my hands and all my fingers. It could have been worse. They roughed me up a bit, but I have no seriously broken bones,”

  “Seriously broken? What does that mean? What bones are broken?” Hollis said.

  Willem said nothing.

  “They cracked your ribs, didn’t they? That happened to me once, and I stood like you’re doing.” How could he downplay broken bones? “Anything that’s broken is serious.”

  “I’m alive.” He pointed to his face. “No permanent damage. This will heal.”

  Her anger ebbed as rapidly as it had come, but she still felt overwhelming guilt, despite his reassuring words. More than that, she needed to know what the thugs had tried to beat out of him and what he’d told them. Given his condition, it would be crass to pursue the subject, but she had to know if she’d endangered Candace and Elizabeth.

  “I gave the translation to the police.”

  “About time. Does that mean you’ve stopped your Nancy Drew stuff?”

  Hollis ignored the question. “I hate to ask, but I’m going to. What did they want to know? What did you tell them?”

  “I’ll tell you, but I need coffee and something sweet. My blood sugar level is nonexistent.” Willem attempted a smile that must have hurt, since it disappeared almost as soon as his lips curved.

  “My treat,” Hollis said, reaching into her bag for her change purse. “Find a place to sit down, and I’ll bring it to you. What do you want?”

  “Thanks, even though it was my suggestion, I accept. A chocolate doughnut and a cappuccino, and bring several envelopes of brown sugar,” Willem responded.

  Snacks in hand, she joined him on an unoccupied slatted bench facing the indoor pond.

  “Well,” Hollis said.

  Willem eyed his cup as if he feared the pain that might result if the hot liquid touched his split lip. He blew on it and took a careful sip. A light foam mustache decorated his upper lip.

  Hollis longed to reach forward and gently wipe it away but restrained herself.

  “Something wrong?” Willem asked.

  “A mustache,” Hollis said.

  Willem tidied himself, tentatively broke off a small morsel of doughnut, opened his mouth a crack and slid it in.

  Hollis waited.

  “They wanted to know where I’d heard about the bug. I stuck to my subway story.”

  Having been holding her breath, she expelled a puff of air and relaxed the tension in her shoulders.

  “Where did they take you after they forced you away from your office?”

  “A garage somewhere. Then they hauled me into a car and dumped me in an industrial park near Overlea Boulevard. Once I regained consciousness, it took me more than an hour to get on my feet and clean and patch myself up. For a while there, I didn’t think I’d be able to do it. Waves of nausea hit me every time I moved. I could see the sign for the East York Town Centre and limped over. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that mall, but you see everything and everybody. Even though I was a mess, no one looked at me or phoned the police. I bought bandaids and cleaned up in the washroom. Then I found a payphone and called you to arrange a meeting. I don’t trust cell phones. I wanted to pass on what I’d heard in person.”

  He had to relate all of this in his own way and time.

  “In the garage, when they knocked me down and kicked me in the head, I pretended I’d blacked out. They conferred about reviving me. They said they had orders from the boss to find out how much I knew about Super Bug returning. Then they kicked me again in the head and I passed out for real. Next thing I knew I was behind a dumpster in a parking area for a factory that was closed.”

  Hollis heard “kicked in the head”. “Willem, look at me,” she ordered.

  She examined his pupils. The right was much smaller than the left. “We have to go to the hospital, to St. Mikes, immediately,” she said setting her cup on the bench and standing up.

  “What?” Willem’s face registered his confusion.

  “Any kind of head injury can result in a concussion. That can lead to a brain hemorrhage. You need to go to hospital and have them monitor you on an hour-to-hour basis,” she said, offering him her arm.

  “Are you crazy? We’d spend the entire night waiting to be seen. I’ve been to the ER before, and I know what I’m talking about.” He settled back. “Get this. I am not going anywhere except home to bed. I came here against my better judgment, because I knew you’d be worried.” He stopped and glared at her. “Not about me. That would be too much to expect. But about what I’d told them. You didn’t say, but other people must be involved in this, whatever this is.”

  He might as well have slapped her face. Not worried about him? How unfair. Well, maybe not unjust—he’d warned her that she was meddling in something dangerous, and she’d ignored his warning and persuaded him to continue. She couldn’t let him go home. What if he had a stroke or bleeding in his brain and ending up lying alone in his apartment?

  “Seriously, both your pupils should be the same size. They aren’t. Something is happening in your brain.” She’d appeal to his common sense. “If you want to continue to be a linguistics professor and, even more, if you want to go to law school, your brain has to be fully operational. You don’t want bleeding to wipe out neurons you’ll need.”

  “I am not going to the hospital. The thugs didn’t get anything out of me. I don’t know why they didn’t finish the job, why they dumped me. Maybe they figured I was dying, or they thought I really didn’t know anything. If they know I’m alive, their boss may order them to try again.”

  Hollis registered what he’d said viscerally. Her stomach contracted, and her breath came in short gasps. “You think they may still intend to kill you,” she said in a high-pitched voice she hardly recognized as her own.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  They hadn’t killed him, and he needed medical attention. If he wouldn’t go to the hospital, she couldn’t make him. Even if she called 911 and the police, fire and ambulance services arrived, they had no power to force him to seek medical help. What if she offered to go home with him and wake him every hour? If he lapsed into unconsciousness, she could call an ambulance. But what about MacTee? She couldn’t leave him, because Candace couldn’t walk him at night when Elizabeth was in bed. They could grab a cab to her place, collect MacTee, pile into her truck and go to Willem’s place. It was one option.

  He grimaced as he sipped his coffee. Was it from his lip or his ribs or his head? He must have a massive headache. Was that a sign of brain damage? She wished she had more medical knowledge.

  “You mustn’t be alone,” she said.

  She’d pick him up like a bulky parcel and take him home with her. What if the thugs had followed him? What if they waited outside or right here in the building? She glanced around to see if anyone seemed out of place in the library. An impo
ssible assessment. The variety of people in the lobby told her nothing except that Toronto was a multicultural, multiracial city where people came to the library for as many reasons as there were patrons. Maybe Willem would refuse. Maybe they’d sit here until the library closed then deal with the situation. She had to try.

  “Willem, come home with me and let me monitor your eyes, make you chicken soup, do what caring women have always done. It’s the least I can do,” she said.

  He didn’t smile. Didn’t say he’d love chicken soup. Instead, he sighed, winced and shook his head. “They were serious. I don’t want to risk bringing harm to you.”

  “Do you think they followed you?”

  “No. Once I’d phoned you from the shopping centre, I hailed a cab. There’s a stand outside the grocery store. When we arrived at Union Station, I struggled inside, then staggered out and took a second cab up here.”

  How careful he’d been to cover his tracks. He’d prolonged his pain, his desire to get to his own bed and collapse, in his single-minded determination to meet her, to warn her. Tears welled. With a golf-ball-sized lump in her throat, she’d have a hard time speaking, but she had to persuade him to stay with her.

  “You have to.” She attempted a smile, a lighthearted remark. “You have to do it for selfish me, so I’ll be able to live with myself. If I leave you here to find your way back to your apartment where the mob guys may be waiting to see if you made it back, I won’t be able to maintain my façade as a nice, caring person.”

  Willem didn’t smile, but he did nod. “Well, I couldn’t be responsible for a drop in your self-esteem, could I?”

  While they’d talked, he’d lost colour, become a sickly yellow-grey, a sign of total exhaustion or something more serious. She reached in her bag and pulled out her wallet. “I carry a taxi card. I’ll call, then I’ll help you outside.”

  “Okay. Hard for a macho fellow to admit, but I’ve about reached the end of my endurance.”

  Inside the cab, Hollis resisted the urge to ask the driver if anyone was following them or to stare out the rear window. Instead, she held Willem’s hand and said nothing. At the house, she paid, came around, opened the door and helped him out. He wobbled and took one step before he stopped.

  “I can’t even take a deep breath,” he said shakily.

  “Unfortunately, I live on the third floor,” Hollis said.

  How to get him up there? The front steps—surely they could make it that far. Then she’d help him sit down.

  “There’s a young man in the basement apartment. Let’s get you to the steps. Then I’ll get him. We need help.”

  “Yes, we do,” Willem whispered.

  Slowly, almost inch by inch, they edged up the short walk. Willem transferred what felt like his entire weight to Hollis, who kept telling herself to hang on, to make one more forward move before she collapsed. At the stoop, Willem crumpled against Hollis, who lowered him to the second step where he sagged back with his eyes closed.

  She wished she’d instructed the driver to take them to the nearest hospital emergency. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “Why don’t I go in and call an ambulance?” she asked.

  Willem didn’t open his eyes.

  “Should I?” she said.

  “I heard you the first time,” Willem said in a nearly inaudible voice. “No. We’ll make it. I just need to rest for a moment.”

  She prayed Jack would be home. Inside the vestibule, she buzzed his apartment and held her breath.

  “Yes?”

  “Jack, it’s Hollis, the top-floor tenant. I have a friend who’s coming to stay with me, and he’s ill. Would you help me get him up to my apartment?”

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll be out.”

  When Jack emerged, his smile evaporated when he saw Willem. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

  “He’s weak,” she said.

  “He looks like he’s been beaten up. Is that what happened?” Jack said.

  Willem opened his eyes. “I’ve been sick, and I had a bad fall. Thanks for helping,” he said in a nearly normal voice.

  “Can you use the hand rail to pull yourself, and I’ll come behind and push?” Jack said.

  “No. I have broken ribs,” Willem said.

  “Crawling might be the best way,” Hollis suggested.

  “It might. My knees are okay, and my arms. I don’t have any strength though.”

  “We’ll be on either side, and we’ll help move and lift your arms and knees if you can’t,” Jack offered.

  Stair by stair, they began the trek.

  When they reached the landing between the first and second floor, Willem held up his hand. “I have to rest,” he panted, and they eased themselves to the floor.

  Candace’s door opened a crack, and she peeked out.

  “It’s me and Willem and Jack,” Hollis called.

  “What are you doing? Why are you on the floor?” Candace asked stepping into the crowded hall.

  “Willem had an…” Hollis paused. “Had” wasn’t exactly the right verb. She should say that two men from the Russian mob kicked the shit out of him and left him for dead, but this wasn’t the time, particularly with Jack there. “…an accident and he’s going to stay with me tonight.” She hoped her tone conveyed the sense that the circumstances, however bizarre, were perfectly okay. “His ribs are damaged, so he can’t use the railing, and Jack is helping him,” she said.

  “Willem? You did say Willem?”

  “Yes.” Silly in the circumstances, but she added, “Willem, this is Candace.”

  Candace must have figured it wasn’t the time to comment on Willem’s role in their lives or on his arrival. “It’s a good thing Jack was home. Do you need me to help too?” she said.

  “We’re doing okay. Slow and steady,” Hollis said.

  “Glad to meet you, Willem, even if the circumstances aren’t the best. Hollis, I have mac and cheese left from our dinner. I’ll bring a dish up once you’re settled,” she said and returned to her apartment.

  “Your landlady?” Willem asked.

  “Yes.” Hollis wasn’t about to talk about their friendship. They continued to sit on the floor, waiting for Willem to signal his readiness to continue.

  “I’m the downstairs tenant,” Jack said. “I’m here because Candace’s brother, Danson, is a lacrosse player and scout for the Toronto team, and he persuaded his sister to allow me stay here.” Why he needed to explain this to Willem was beyond Hollis. Maybe he felt he should make conversation.

  “Have you heard any more about Danson? Has anyone figured out where he’s gone? The team needs him,” Jack said to Hollis.

  Damn. Willem might make the connections if Jack didn’t shut up.

  “You okay, Willem? Can we do the last flight? I’m sure we’re keeping Jack from something important,” Hollis said.

  “No, seriously, something must have happened to him. I mean guys go AWOL if the loan sharks are after them or they want to run away with a woman, but Danson was keen about this year’s team. I can’t see him doing an end run like this.”

  “It is strange,” Hollis agreed.

  “Have you filed a missing persons report?” Jack persisted.

  “Jack, we have. Nothing has turned up. Now let’s get Willem upstairs.”

  “Missing person,” Willem mumbled.

  The jig was up.

  Seventeen

  Good thing we wore the vests. She could have done you serious harm,” Ian said as Rhona straightened her clothes and collected herself.

  “Who knew she was that strong,” Rhona’s jaw set in a hard line. “Enough pussyfooting around. Time to take the place apart.”

  Hands cuffed behind her back, Katerina slumped in the chair, talking to herself exclusively in Russian.

  “My god. I’m sorry. I never think she attack you. She crazy,” Spike said. “I watch her for you.” He patted his mother’s shoulder and said something that sounded reassuring.

  Katerina pai
d no attention. She’d retreated to another reality.

  Hand still on his mother’s shoulder, his gaze moved from one detective to the other. “She had really hard time when she came to Canada,” he said. “She had profession in Russia. Here she clean houses. Then my brother was killed. He her star, her hope for future. She go crazy.”

  Despite the attack, Rhona felt sorry for the wreck huddled in the chair. She always wanted to know the back story—how people got to be the way they were.

  “Was she right? Would your brother have been a success?”

  Spike patted his mother’s shoulder again. “Who can know? I not think so. He want quick money.” He sighed. “He think crime pays. No, he not her hope for future, but she believe.”

  “Let’s do our search,” Ian said.

  They left Spike talking gently to Katerina.

  The kitchen, messy and stacked with dishes and half-eaten food, told them nothing except that Katerina was a poor housekeeper. The dining half of the living room held a large table, almost obliterated by piles of books and papers, baskets of wool. One corner was devoted to picture framing. At least six deep shadowbox frames were piled precariously one on top of the other. A hammer, staple gun, glue and tape lined up on the edge of a rectangle of oilcloth provided an indication that Katerina was sometimes tidy and methodical.

  “Seems like she was in the picture-framing business,” Ian said. He allowed his gaze to roam the walls of the combined living room dining room. “She didn’t hang them here.”

  Rhona opened a sideboard crammed with dishes and dusty glasses. Books were piled on the floor.

  “What you looking for?” Spike asked from the living room where he’d pulled a chair close to his mother and sat watching the two detectives.

  “This and that,” Rhona said.

  Katerina’s head snapped up, and her body tensed as if she was about to spring from her chair. “Secret police take everything.” She raised her voice. “No good. I have no money. Nothing to take. Thieves. Secret police are thieves.”

  “Katerina.” Rhona scrunched down until she was on eye level with Katerina. “Katerina, do you have something you’d like to tell us?”